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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26022289">ask me about love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience'>emollience</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, F/F, First Kiss, I'm Sorry Women, Pining, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:23:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26022289</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I thought this was what you wanted,” says Catra, and she knows it’s cruel and wrong. She can’t stop. “I’m not blind.” </p><p>Scorpia hardly reacts. “This isn’t what you want.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>catra &amp; the kisses before one at the heart of the etheria.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Catra/Scorpia (She-Ra)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>364</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>ask me about love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i listened to "she" by dodie on repeat while writing this i'm entirely unhinged</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="small">My rot is as hungry as me. &amp; when God asks me about love, I always respond with cruelty. </span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small"> <span class="small">"BELOVED," Yves Olade</span> </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="small">Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal, <br/>You still get to be the hero. </span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small"> <span class="small">"LITANY IN WHICH CERTAIN THINGS ARE CROSSED OUT," Richard Siken<br/></span></span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Scorpia continues to make Catra tea. The meaning behind the gesture doesn’t escape Catra. She has eyes: She’s noticed for years the way Scorpia looks at her; has recognized every single instance that Scorpia tried to get closer, to climb over the carefully constructed walls Catra painstakingly built inch by inch. </p><p>As the months pass and Catra spends hours in Hordak’s sanctum constructing his laser and planning the siege on Salineas, Scorpia experiments: a different flavored cup of tea is left on Catra’s desk every evening, gone cold by the time she drags herself back to her room. Orange, apple, ginger, raspberry. Catra finds fault with them all. She downs every single one. None help her sleep. </p><p>
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</p><p>“Why did you do it?” asks the Adora in her dreams. Always Adora, steel-eyed and angry like she’s never been. Never She-Ra, blinding and inhuman as she turned from the splintering portal and fixed her narrowed eyes on Catra. </p><p>“Why did you do it?” asks Scorpia one evening, voice soft, confused. A steaming cup of tea rests between two claws. </p><p>Snatching the cup, Catra says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and downs its contents in one gulp. Lemongrass, she realizes. She shoves it into Scorpia’s claws and walks away without a word. </p><p>
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</p><p>In the Horde there are stories of Beast Island: horror stories told to young cadets in their early years meant to instill fear and obedience. Behave, obey, worship the might of the Horde, the power of Lord Hordak, and you will never learn the true meaning of fear. </p><p>Adora, bright and young and bleeding optimism from the moment they’d met, used to nestle Catra’s hands between her rough, calloused palms and whisper, “Let’s create our own stories.” And Catra, blinded by the light of childhood love, nodded and said, “We’re together in all of them.” She said, “We’re never apart. It’s you and me at the end of the world,” and Adora smiled every time.</p><p>She remembers this clearly as she travels through the Crimson Waste with Scorpia trailing after her. The terrible fate whose stories were overshadowed by a girl she longed to forget just narrowly avoided by a sentence a degree less severe. The oppressive heat of the desert bears heavy on her cloak covered shoulders, blurring the horizon into the impression of wet paint. Through it all Scorpia rattles off with an all too familiar optimism that stings. Catra tries―has tried, again and again and again―not to allow memories to superimpose the present, knowing with certainty it’ll make things worse, that she’ll resent Scorpia through no fault of her own.</p><p>Things go right, and Tung Lashor’s gang cheers her name, and Scorpia smiles at Catra like Catra molded the desert with her own hands, like Catra is the beginning and end of the whole of Etheria, like Catra could do anything and say anything and she’d never ever leave. The unfamiliar joy buzzing beneath her skin makes it all too easy to pull Scorpia behind a rock pillar during a rest stop to the center of the Waste. Even easier, really, to rise as high as she can on the balls of her feet, grab Scorpia’s jaw between slim, calloused hands, and press her lips to hers. The noise Scorpia makes borders somewhere between shock and pure joy, and Catra laughs against her mouth. She kisses her again. This time Scorpia kisses back, claws pressed gently to the space between Catra’s jutting shoulder blades. She tastes faintly like lemongrass. </p><p>Catra pulls away, the force of her smile aching, and Scorpia, red faced and awed, breathes her name. </p><p>“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she answers, then walks away, follows her newly conquered gang to a ship holding a girl, and a sword, and Catra’s breaking. </p><p>
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</p><p>Horror stories are easy. It all comes down to timing: Piece your sentences together strategically; place your characters on the right spot at the right time; notice the slow winding tension raising your audiences shoulders to their ears, their eyes widening as you go on until it all comes together and they gasp or scream or―in Kyle’s case―cry. A release. </p><p>Catra understands horror stories. She lives it. It’s a carefully constructed one: Adora, the princess and the hero wrapped into one, and Catra, the villain with claws and fangs. It’s simple. It’s perfect. She once thought that she too could be the hero. That she could hold Adora’s hand and bask in her warmth and they’d rise together, always together, to split that throne and build one big enough for the two of them. </p><p>She’s the bad guy. She knows that now. It’s easy to push past the complicated briar bush tangle of her feelings and pinpoint plain fact. In this story she looks at Adora knelt on the ground with her hands tied to the post, her face desperate as she pleads. In this story she smiles and pulls the lever. In the end, she’s worse than whatever fate awaited Entrapta on Beast Island. </p><p>
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</p><p>“You stopped making tea,” Catra says from her place at Scorpia’s door. The room itself is unfamiliar. With Scorpia so often seeking Catra out she had rarely needed to visit it herself. It’s different from her own barren Force Captain quarters: Pictures and drawings and decorations pepper across every wall; framed photographs line her dresser along with tiny stuffed animals and other small trinkets; clothes litter the floor, a stark contrast to the neatly organized desk shoved below the sole window in the room. The vest Catra gifted her hangs off the desk chair. A cup of still steaming tea rests on her bedside table. </p><p>From her perch sitting at the edge of her bed, Scorpia frowns. She stares down at her lap, her claws resting atop her thighs. “You don’t like it,” she answers, and Catra can’t find a rebuttal. </p><p>She says, “Look at me,” then promptly wishes she hadn’t. </p><p>The expression fitted to Scorpia’s face is tortured. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she admits softly. Everything she says and does is so gentle especially juxtaposed to her exoskeleton, her claws. “I don’t know what you want anymore.” </p><p>Catra says nothing. She crosses the space between them, the door sliding shut with a hiss behind her. Sitting down, Scorpia is only a few inches shorter than Catra standing. She tilts her chin up to meet Catra’s gaze. This time, when Catra kisses her, no noise escapes her. Scorpia’s mouth is warm; her lips soft against her own, and Catra settles a hand in her short hair, fingers tangling in white locks. When she kisses her, Scorpia keeps her claws away; simply lets Catra’s other hand curved to the sharp line of her jaw tilt her face up as she deepens the kiss. She tastes familiar; like the lemongrass tea she favors. Catra presses herself closer, fitting herself between Scorpia’s legs, and she kisses her slow and tender, like she’s been waiting long to do so again. </p><p>A claw touches the small of Catra’s back. She nearly falls to her knees from the simple pressure of it. She grips Scorpia’s hair, kisses her again and again and again, shifting from tenderness to desperation. She kisses her mouth, her jaw, the space beneath her ear, her neck until at last Scorpia makes noise. </p><p>Then: Scorpia pushes her away. She breaks away. Her eyes, only inches from Catra’s, are very wide and tinged red around the edges when they hadn’t been before. She breathes Catra’s name. She says, “Not like this,” her breath ragged. </p><p>“I thought this was what you wanted,” says Catra, and she knows it’s cruel and wrong. She can’t stop. “I’m not blind.” </p><p>Scorpia hardly reacts. “This isn’t what you want.” Crueler than anything Catra could ever manage, she says, “I’m not who you want.” </p><p>“Shut up,” Catra hisses and rips from her embrace. She hasn’t caught her breath quite just yet, and she can’t imagine what she looks like. Her face burns. “Shut up.” </p><p>“I’m not blind,” Scorpia continues, and she looks at Catra like she’d rather admit to anything but the festering black abscess living between them for years. “I see the way you look at her.” </p><p>Catra steps back; clenches her trembling hands into tight fists at her sides.  “You don’t know anything.” </p><p>Scorpia doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away. “I meant it,” she continues, “when I said you’re a bad friend.” </p><p>
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</p><p>The Horde takes Salineas. Catra presses a claw to the badge on her shirt and talks and receives silence in response. She sits at the edge of the kingdom she helped to defeat, knees pulled up to her chest, alone. </p><p>
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</p><p>A note with a singular word in Scorpia’s neat script folded over a familiar vest: <em> Sorry.  </em></p><p>
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